Disney World 2015~
Our surprise trip to Never Never Land and Back:)
Love the little details from "Tangled" on this street...
Just Hanging out in Pooh's house.
This past year , we decided the kids were old enough to go to Disney World for vacation. (That, or we decided that we were mentally ready to do it.) We had never taken them on any "big" trips and thought it was time for something exceptional and well deserved. The children were both 4 and 6 and are only a couple weeks shy of their birthdays. We weren't keen on taking them when they were younger and not sure how some people take children younger than three as 1) It seems more hassle than it's worth and 2) I wonder how much they actually remember for something so monumental! As the movie "Inside Out" would say , it's a "core" memory after all. So we planned and saved and saved and planned , but more importantly we kept it a complete secret from the children. They had no idea when and where we were going or that we were going anywhere at all. We set a date and put our plan into action. October 28th was going to be the magical day. We made sure we would do a slight overload of Disney specific movies over a period of months. Especially if they were related to a ride or show we were going to see. Getting the kids to watch the movie related to "Splash Mountain" was interesting. The ride was based on the 1946 movie "Song of the South" and to say that the movie was a bit removed from what the children were used to watching would be a bit of an understatement. Months of Pirates of the Caribbean , Toy Story , Swiss Family Robinson (you didn't think of that one , did you?) Peter Pan , Alice in Wonderland , Snow White, etc etc. I would sit by the pool with the kids during the summer and slyly ask them where they would want to go on vacation if they could choose. Asking a 4 and 6 year this usually brings up interesting answers as their scope of the world is a wee bit narrow. Jackson once told me "Paris" which made me chuckle as I never saw that coming. We sort of made that happen thanks to "Epcot's World Showcase:)
Although Ladonna and I had been to Disney many times before , coming back with the children was an amazing different feeling. It was the first time we came there with children and it felt so different when we entered Main Street USA. Hopefully the beginning of a new tradition for many years to come.
Gaston and Lefou - Hands down my most favorite "Villain" and idiot sidekick.
After months of us secretly planning, the day came when we were going to tell the children. We wanted their normal schedule of activities to be uninterrupted so they wouldn't be suspicious. After school they went to gymnastics until about 6:30. I ordered Chinese food and took out the fortune cookies that came with the meal and swapped in "special" fortune cookies LaDonna had bought from Etsy. Dinner came and went and when it was time to open the fortune cookies we made Jackson read his. Ella can't quite read yet so the cliffhanger hung entirely on him. At first they were excited , but you could clearly see that they did not believe us. At all. They kept asking if we were kidding , but we assured them that the next day at 6am we were going on their first flight to Florida. Crazy enough , they went to bed rather early and fell asleep faster than I thought.
Disney makes it easy to plan your trip out. In all reality, depending on how OCD you are, you can plan your trip down to the hour you ride your rides and when you eat and so forth. That's where LaDonna came in. She made a binder and planned everything out down to the hour for everyday we were in the park. She scheduled fast passes , character meets , breakfast with princess , where we would eat, and what rides we were able to ride and when. We hit Disney hard and pretty much accomplished everything we wanted to do thanks to 4 day hopper passes and one night of "Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party". If you are thinking about doing any of the special nighttime holiday parties (either Christmas / Halloween) - DO IT. Based on the simple fact that the park actually limits the amount of people into the park and the capacity is def lower than normal. You get special parades , shows , treats , and most importantly - NO LINES. We rode pretty much anything we wanted on the first day during the Halloween festivities because people were too busy getting candy. (The candy was actually lame. I'm sorry DisneyWorld , but I find better candy in the cracks of our couch). The park advertises the party to start at 7pm and runs to midnight , but what they don't publicly announce is that you can get in at 4pm! We were really impressed with the ingenuity of some people's costumes for both themselves and sometimes their whole families. Some people were completely interchangeable with the park employees. The parade was awesome and we were only able to catch part of the "Hocus Pocus" show (Another older movie we had to introduce them to). Just great stuff:)
"I could get used to this...."
Hilton's Parc Soleil Hotel in Orlando. About a 15 minute drive to any of the Disney Parks
"Galactic Hero" / Look up how hard that is to achieve! Especially for a 6 year old....
As with any trip to Disney , all the planning you do goes out the window at one point or another. In our case it was good though, because the Halloween Party pass allowed us to quickly ride and see so many things on day one. We were way ahead of schedule on things we were going to do the next day. That alone made the week itself speed up in ways that allowed us to see things we didn't think we would have time for. In hindsight I think we would have gladly done 2 days of the Halloween party as opposed to 2 normal days in the park, I really can't think of what we would miss out on during the open to 4pm time range.
As far as technology goes for this trip , it's pretty much a requirement in our trips (or any modern day family on the go) I cannot say enough about the magic bands and their actual usefulness and marketing ingenuity.They have each person's name id'd to them with all our passes for both daily passes and the Halloween party. Any photos that were taken by the Disney employees on their Nikon cameras were also "swiped" to the cloud using our bands. Appointments / dinner reservations / Fast Passes / - All on the bands! Now , you can use the Disney credit tickets in just the same way , but having the bands on your arms was crazy convenient and you could personalize them in one of a million ways (cash cow). i decided to use only a pocket camera on this trip (Sony RX100 IV) as bringing a DSLR to me was too "try hard". I didn't want to lug a big camera around for something I wanted to have more fun doing than shooting. The Sony RX100 was no slouch at all. Super quick and excellent quality photos. A quick review by me wouldn't do the camera justice , but the actual usefulness and portability of the camera was awesome. We also took the ol' Go Pro too for the water rides and roller coasters. I've been fairly addicted to shooting it in 4k (although we can only watch it in 4k on the Macbook) and we got some great footage for years to remember.
